


Wanderer

by raven_rising



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Character Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-17 15:19:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3534314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raven_rising/pseuds/raven_rising
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She tries to be a good person and she, eventually, comes to realize the truth in the phrase about the road to hell being paved with good intentions."<br/>Character study/drabble of Clarke post season two.<br/>No dialogue. Lots of angst with a hopeful (if not happy) ending. Slight (very) Bellarke at the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wanderer

**Author's Note:**

> In no way does this even reflect what season three will be like. It's so far off the mark and not action heavy as the show is.  
> There's a potential for Bellamy's side, which I might end up doing.  
> Written in one sitting tonight, un-betad (per my usual).  
> I've been in this weird apathetic state lately. Most mornings I don't even want to get out of bed, so please excuse the lack of updates. I didn't mean to abandon the prompts I was given and I WILL write them, I swear.  
> I've just been having trouble with everything.

Clarke wanders. Sometimes she feels like if she lets her feet carry her where they will, she can almost outrun the voices and images in her head. Clarke mostly lies to herself in this endeavor in the beginning.  
  
She watches the seasons change around her and begs her mind to please, _please_ just let her change with them. She longs to shed her own being like the leaves do as the sun rises a little less higher with every passing day.  
  
She feels the bite of chilled winds wrap around her, sees the snow swirl in the eddy around her and wants to just let herself sink below it. She wants to arise anew with the blooming of green grass. Most times, though, she wants to slip below it and have it encase her forever so she'll never have to face what she has done.  
  
Unintentionally she keeps the warmth of the sun to her right as it falls to kiss the horizon the way it did when she walked away from the life she knew. She thinks of it as a reminder that at her back lies safety and love and, if she could just let herself accept it, forgiveness.  
  
She forgets her own name most of the time, which is an odd concept and one she never contemplated before, but she never loses the people she leaves behind her. She can imagine the bustle of life in Camp Jaha. She imagines Jasper and Monty, Raven and Wick-her and Bellamy's people that left Mount Weather perhaps a little less whole but still living.  
  
She thinks of Bellamy and imagines the expression on his face when she left. She remembers the pain in his voice with his parting blessing and how it caused her to stop in her tracks for a moment. She tucks away the emotions she feels when she thinks of his offered forgiveness because she feels she does not deserve it yet. When she sleeps, she cannot escape her terrors and agony, so she mostly does without. She dreams of a soccer ball that will never be played with again. She gasps awake because she saw the spinning image that represents a turbine. She thinks of the way Jasper's arms wrapped around Maya in support even though she could not reciprocate (and the look on his face when he begs her with "why" in supplication).  
  
She stares down at her hands and feels the phantom touch of a lever that irrevocably changed her. She remembers his hand over hers and lets it settle her racing heart. She wonders what her father, a man who tried to save others, would think of her now.  
  
She attempts atonement as she travels across towering hills of sand; her legs power her across flat plains of dirt and rock. She asks the rain to make her new but her request goes unanswered. She meets clans of grounders that do not know her name or her misdeeds against innocent people. She learns how these other clans live, not in war and bloodshed but in the bright sparkling laughter of children and the quiet hum of peaceful nights.  
  
She is no longer Clarke Griffin of the Sky People. She becomes named in the Grounder tongue exactly what she is-Wanderer. It is fitting and apt as it implies that she has no home. Sometimes she thinks the last home she had was a place of clean lines and metal that traversed across the sky above the planet. She helps to tear down structures and build them up again-in doing so she learns how things end and die and start again. She uses her knowledge of medicine and healing to soothe the ache in her own heart. Sometimes she loses people she tries to help and she thinks she forgets how to breathe.  
  
She tries to be a good person and she, eventually, comes to realize the truth in the phrase about the road to hell being paved with good intentions. Her mother's wisdom echoes in her ear about how there might not be any good guys. It is not a phrase she understood in that moment like she now understands it. There are the choices that are made in the want and need to do right and that sometimes, the consequences of those actions are not what are expected. She realizes that she cannot predict the actions and emotions of others, and that life is a fluid entity that can never truly be planned out.

 

* * *

  
She cries when she sees the ocean for the first time, letting the salt of her tears mix with the blue expanse before her. The beach on which she stands is nothing like the tall, towering trees she ran from months ago. It is wide open and calm and she does not have to fear that there is anyone lying in the cover of foliage waiting to strike. She kneels and lets her hands disappear into the grit of the sand. That's the moment when she thinks, just maybe, that she can learn to accept it-not to forget, never to forget-but to forgive herself. She wants to show Bellamy the ocean, because if anyone can understand the way it awes her that the sparkling waves unceasingly come back to shore and what that means it is him. She remembers his offering of forgiveness and realizes that she co-exists with her demons.  
  
She puts the sun on her left and lets it warm the colder parts of her. It is time that she returns to home-to people that understand her transgressions and love her anyway.

* * *

  
She hears that oft imagined bustle of life before she even breaks the tree line. She pauses for a moment, closes her eyes, and prays that she is not wrong in her convictions. She is not wrong. As she crosses the gate she is welcomed with kinds words and warm embraces. Her mother presses a kiss to her forehead and smiles at her and she feels her shoulders relax for the first time in a long time. Bellamy's arms are a benediction. They are the ending that she has been seeking for herself and did not think she could ever find.  
  
"Welcome home, Clarke," he whispers into her ear as he cradles her against him.  
  
"Thank you," she whispers as her vision blurs.  
  
They both know, without the direct stating of it, that it is because of the forgiveness he gave with no strings attached, but it is also more. He kept her name for her, safe, when she no longer felt she could be Clarke. He took care of her even when she was not physically present.  
  
Over his shoulder she sees the sun shine and remembers the reminder she carried with her during her journey. She remembers wanting to vanish beneath the dirt of the earth. She watches the grass sway in the wind and knows that here, in this moment, she wants to stand on her own two feet among it and not below it. She breathes in deeply and feels alive. It is enough.


End file.
